Millennium Actress (2001) Sennen Joyū
A two-man filmed interview of a legendary, retired actress delves into mystery and reveals surprises for both documentarians and interviewee as they appear to re-live and participate not just in the memories she recounts but in the plots of a series of films involving themes of a search for a masculine ideal, recurring earthquakes, clashes with a fellow actress, a love affair with her director, the loving admiration of an anonymous crew member, and a mysterious ghostly lady whose curse has life-long effects on the actress.
Past and present, and life-events and films all blend together into a single decades-encompassing narrative so that her personal memories become a part of her films, (the first Manchuria sequence though seemingly a film originally, is eventually revealed to be a private memory despite of which a crew member claims to have cried while seeing ‘the film’ multiple times.)
The scripts of all her sampled films involve an enigmatic key (whose function is to ‘unlock’ memories) and her life-long efforts in returning it to a mysterious artist.
While seemingly encompassing decades of Japanese cinema, the segments we see seem more inspired by anime that actual live-action films even when overt references to historical dramas, fantasies, Kaiju films and 60s science fiction are made.
Was there ever a live-action historic adventures (covering from the Edo period to the Taishō era, to a science fictional future,) with a female protagonist such as we see here? Those segments seem to recall (later) Anime fantasies more than any live-action film I am aware of.
Even the cinematic supernatural fantasies popular with Western audiences (Kumonosu-jō, Onibaba, Kwaidan, Kuroneko, Ugetsu, etc.) aren’t quite like anything we see here, (even the film's Gojira stand-in isn't quite it,) so this isn’t so much a historical recap as an idealized one.
With the voices of Miyoko Shōji, Mami Koyama, Fumiko Orikasa, Shōzō Iizuka, Shōko Tsuda, Hirotaka Suzuoki, Hisako Kyōda, Kōichi Yamadera, and Masane Tsukayama.
Check it out.
A two-man filmed interview of a legendary, retired actress delves into mystery and reveals surprises for both documentarians and interviewee as they appear to re-live and participate not just in the memories she recounts but in the plots of a series of films involving themes of a search for a masculine ideal, recurring earthquakes, clashes with a fellow actress, a love affair with her director, the loving admiration of an anonymous crew member, and a mysterious ghostly lady whose curse has life-long effects on the actress.
Past and present, and life-events and films all blend together into a single decades-encompassing narrative so that her personal memories become a part of her films, (the first Manchuria sequence though seemingly a film originally, is eventually revealed to be a private memory despite of which a crew member claims to have cried while seeing ‘the film’ multiple times.)
The scripts of all her sampled films involve an enigmatic key (whose function is to ‘unlock’ memories) and her life-long efforts in returning it to a mysterious artist.
While seemingly encompassing decades of Japanese cinema, the segments we see seem more inspired by anime that actual live-action films even when overt references to historical dramas, fantasies, Kaiju films and 60s science fiction are made.
Was there ever a live-action historic adventures (covering from the Edo period to the Taishō era, to a science fictional future,) with a female protagonist such as we see here? Those segments seem to recall (later) Anime fantasies more than any live-action film I am aware of.
Even the cinematic supernatural fantasies popular with Western audiences (Kumonosu-jō, Onibaba, Kwaidan, Kuroneko, Ugetsu, etc.) aren’t quite like anything we see here, (even the film's Gojira stand-in isn't quite it,) so this isn’t so much a historical recap as an idealized one.
With the voices of Miyoko Shōji, Mami Koyama, Fumiko Orikasa, Shōzō Iizuka, Shōko Tsuda, Hirotaka Suzuoki, Hisako Kyōda, Kōichi Yamadera, and Masane Tsukayama.
Check it out.
statistics: Posted by hermanthegerm — 7:39 PM - 1 day ago — Replies 0 — Views 88